Clare
- Pronunciation
- [Clare]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Bright
- Origin
- French
About the Name Clare
Clare comes from the Latin clarus, meaning "bright," "clear," or "famous," and is the traditional English spelling of a name long carried by saints and scholars. The form Clare has a particularly English, understated elegance that sets it apart from the more common Claire, and its luminous meaning — light, clarity, brightness — has kept it quietly beloved across many centuries, never wildly fashionable but never truly out of favor either.
Its single clean syllable, Clare, makes it crisp and timeless, simple to say and impossible to date to any one era. The name reads as refined and literary, a classic that feels both very old and effortlessly modern, appealing to parents who prefer restraint and clarity over ornament. Its spareness is its strength, giving it a calm, confident dignity that pairs beautifully with longer or more elaborate middle names.
Clare first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 2000 — its peak year, at rank #535 — and has held a place on the chart through 2024, ranking #949 in that recent year, with 9,367 top-1000 births in total. That long, unbroken presence at consistently modest ranks marks Clare as a steady, enduring classic rather than a fashionable spike, the kind of name that quietly persists through changing trends while never relying on any single moment of popularity to keep its place.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Clare
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Clare by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2000 with 485 girls named Clare (girl rank #535 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #924 for girls (283 US births). That's 389 places below its 2000 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Clare Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Clare the strongest states are Connecticut, Nebraska, Massachusetts.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Connecticut | #335 | 36 |
| 2 | Nebraska | #407 | 17 |
| 3 | Massachusetts | #409 | 130 |
| 4 | Iowa | #472 | 56 |
| 5 | Minnesota | #477 | 97 |
| 6 | Kansas | #490 | 39 |
| 7 | Wisconsin | #529 | 94 |
| 8 | Illinois | #559 | 185 |
| 9 | Pennsylvania | #580 | 172 |
| 10 | Missouri | #624 | 74 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | #1,180 | 79 |
| 2 | North Carolina | #947 | 48 |
| 3 | Washington | #859 | 36 |
| 4 | Arizona | #852 | 21 |
| 5 | Virginia | #733 | 83 |
| 6 | Indiana | #721 | 64 |
| 7 | Ohio | #709 | 116 |
| 8 | New York | #707 | 188 |
| 9 | Michigan | #702 | 103 |
| 10 | New Jersey | #674 | 90 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Clare in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Clare?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Clare to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Clare against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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